In his popular children’s novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis introduced readers to the fictional and very chilly land of Narnia, where it was “… always winter, but never Christmas.” In the Roman Empire for about the first 300 years after the birth of Christianity, there too winter came — but never Christmas; however there was much great and joyous winter celebration nonetheless among the people of the Empire.
Most are surprised to learn that for about the first 300 years of Christianity, there was no celebration of Christmas. The first Christians had no particular interest in the date of the birth of Jesus. They considered the celebration of birthdays in general a pagan practice not to be emulated.
Clement of Alexandria mentions others as suggesting the date of the birth of Jesus, but the dates given vary. It seems most thought Jesus was born in the spring, perhaps in April, when the fields were greening and shepherds would have been in the fields. Not in December, with its cold and rain, when sheep tended to be indoors. Some did, however, as early as Hippolytus in the third century, suggest that Jesus was conceived on the Passover and his nativity was nine months after. Given that the date of Passover is calculated from the lunar calendar, its date varied — but one of the dates calculated happened to be December 25th.
No one knew for sure. In any case, we can say that not only did no one know the exact date, nor did they accord it any real importance as a formal commemoration — something that was given the baptism of Jesus early on. And of course most important was the commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The same was true of martyrs, whose deaths were commemorated, not their births. Of course setting any date for the birth of Jesus means accepting the veracity of the disagreeing Nativity stories in Matthew and Luke — the only two that added birth accounts to the basic material of the Mark Gospel — which included no birth account at all. Nor did the John Gospel.
As most people with a little knowledge of Christian history know, things changed greatly after Emperor Constantine not only legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire but began promoting it. Remember that Constantine was supposedly converted to Christianity in 312 c.e. and legalized and supported it from the date of the Edict of Milan in 313.
In Constantine’s day, there were two significant celebrations enjoyed by Romans. First was the jovial celebration of the god Saturn, which earlier was a single day but by the time of Constantine had grown to seven days, lasting from December 17 to December 23rd. It was a very popular period of feasting and loud merrymaking, of which Catullus said … Sāturnālibus, optimō diērum! — “… Saturnalia, the best of days! And second, there was on December 25th — the Winter Solstice — the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti — the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.” That celebration was formally instituted by Emperor Aurelian in 274 c.e. It had been in existence some 62 years before the first formal Roman celebration of Christmas under Constantine in 336 c.e. That was one year prior to his death.
There is a long and ongoing controversy as to whether Christians under Constantine “co-opted” the Saturnalia and Sol Invictus celebrations by setting the celebration of the birth of Jesus on the 25th of December. The existing celebration of Saturnalia was the biggest, noisiest, and happiest celebration of the year, of which Pliny the Younger wrote: “… I find it delightful to sit there [in his villa] especially during the Saturnalia, when all the rest of the house rings with the merriment and shouts of the festival-makers; for then I do not interfere with their amusements, and they do not distract me from my studies.”
Add to that the Feast of the Unconquered Sun, coming only two days later, and a natural turning point in the year due to the Winter Solstice, and it made a very tempting time for Christians to do what many Christians still do today — try to pressure others — by law when they can manage it — to give up their preferred social habits and adopt “Christian” practices in their place.
It seems reasonable that the choosing of December 25th from among other suggested dates for the birth of Jesus was not just a coincidence, but in part a calculated move to replace those “pagan” celebrations with a new Christian celebration, and sun imagery –often used of Jesus — fit in very well with that notion. The Day of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun was the celebration of the rebirth of the sun in midwinter, and Jesus was said to be the “sun of righteousness, and Christians applied Malachi 4:2 to him:
“But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings ….”
That is made clear even in these lines from the 12th century Latin antiphon “Veni, Veni Emmanuel” often sung today as part of the season from Advent to Christmas:
Veni, veni o Oriens!
Solare nos adveniens,
Noctis depelle nebulas,
Dirasque noctis tenebras
“Come, come, O Rising,
Our Sunlight coming,
Dispel the cloud of night
And the dread shadows of night.”
You are probably familiar with it, but just in case, here is a link to a pleasant performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5fH7xJ9OfA
I will not repeat the calendrical calculations that resulted in the Eastern Orthodox Church shifting its celebration of Christmas from December 25th into January — suffice it to say that the Julian calendar traditionally used in Eastern Orthodoxy is 13 days behind the western Gregorian calendar. It is worth nothing, however, that even today the Armenian Church celebrates the birth of Jesus and the baptism of Jesus (the Feast of Theophany) on the same day — January 6th. That is very much in keeping with the first noted celebration of the Baptism of Jesus on January 6th in the 2nd century by the Gnostic Basilidian Christians.
Here is a late Mstera/Msyora icon of the Nativity from around the end of the 19th century:
It is interesting to compare it with this 4th century mosaic from Lebanon depicting the birth of Alexander the Great:
People tend to forget what a debt Christian iconography owes to the pre-Christian “pagan” world.
ICONS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION 